Steph

Oooh ... it's like solar flares I'm gonna say Veiligglas. In America I might have leaned toward Champion without thinking much about it, but knowing your location I'm feeling pretty good about Veiligglas.

More pics on the blue and yellow?

cool beans Curious now about what the buttons looked like.

I used to resist the new names. When I first started posting here, the forum leaders seemed against making up names without a very good reason, and there was rarely seen to be a good reason. I think the Peltier Angel and Citrus names may have been relatively new at the time. They were well-loved but they were exceptions. Then at AAM, the stigma against naming marbles seemed to have disappeared. Seemed some power players were involved in introducing a lot of new names I was in the surprisingly comfortable position of having to deal with the reality of an explosion of names but with no pressure to learn the names. Since I didn't post at AAM I didn't have much chance to learn the names, and so the pressure of dealing with the whole subject was off. P.s., I actually don't know when the Angel and Citrus names were adopted. Just a vague sense that back in 2005 or 2006 there was something exotic about the names. An excitement that felt new-ish. Might be fun to get some history on when the now-established names were introduced into the lingo. The Vitro Elite had been relatively newly named when I came onto the scene, and it seemed the name was catching on. The Elites were especially colorful Tri-Lites, but the Tri-Lite name wasn't well-known at the time. The Elite name caught on well enough to be featured in an article in the WVMCC newsletter in 2003. Then the Vitro company name became better known and the Elite name fell into disuse.

I posted this in another thread today. I'm adding it here, with permission from Joanne Singleton. This is sample box of early Masters is correctly filled. (I have also added this box to the original post in the thread, because I want it to be easy to find.)

No. Not a Cloudy. Cloudy is a single-color marble. That site is wrong. Somehow the big names in collecting (e.g., Alan Basinet and Bob Block) got way off track with Master's basic style definitions. Part of the messy evolution of figuring out the history of this little child's toy. And then after the first few years of production, Master marbles didn't match their own style definitions. Their marbles became less distinct and I don't think we can really figure out from the boxes they showed up in what Master would actually have called them in those later days. Collectors mess with their own heads trying to figure out if something is a Sunburst or some other name that they picked up from the mistaken definitions on Alan's or Bob's site. This is why I just say "Master" if it does turn out to be a Master and doesn't fit the original definitions. This sample case posted by Joanne Singleton is filled correctly with early Masters. But the percentage of marble collectors who recognize a Cloudy and know its Master name is very low.

We have a winner!

I'll go with annealing fractures. My guess would be that it was a temperature issue. Or maybe temperature combined with getting knocked around. I wouldn't guess mismatched COE's because surely the company would have gotten those basically right before they did the run.

If American then, Master. I wouldn't call it a cat's eye or even try to figure out a style name for it. I would just say "Master". However, it might not be American.

Mojo, I think Vacor on that two color one of yours. (And also on the first three.) Japanese on your white cross-through. I'd guess four of one color and two of another should count as uncommon to say the least but I can't really weigh in on that for Vacor. Vacor can do some really wild things. Having three nice clean pairs of vanes might actually be less common for Vacor.

Yep. There's a thing to note about the word "hybrid". In most marbles, it would be thought of as something unintentional. An Akro popeye, for example is supposed to have two colors plus white in a clear base. If there's an extra color it's thought to be accidental, probably happening when one color was running out and another color was being added. With Vitro, these multi-color cat's eyes were done on purpose. But still we call them hybrids.

The cross-throughs are all considered collectable. Yours is "just" a white cross-through, which is not too terribly hard to find in the normal 5/8" range. But at that size? Most definitely a keeper.

Does that white cross through? That would be fabulous at that size. Could be vintage Japanese ... or modern Mexican ... I'm leaning in the Japanese direction at the moment.

I think we used to call those European sparklers without anyone worrying much about it. Yours are glorious. That top one is oolala.

I don't know of a nickname for the Pelt Rainbo. On the left I sort of want to say Alley but I don't know if the Alley I'm thinking of would be translucent.

I was more than a little hopeful that Halloween would be occur between Monday and Thursday this year. So I would be working at the evening job that I started last November. But since it's on a Sunday, we'll probably have stuff for the trick-or-treaters. Wait! Since it's on a Sunday, my husband won't have an excuse not to do it! He keeps buying candy and toys and putting them in goodie bags with the assumption that I'll hand them out. He can do it this year! Muwahahaha.

Fun!

I didn't notice that he was from the UK. Some of the white had a bit of a foreign look to me, but I let it go because it was more wispy that I would have expected with the white I was thinking of. But if these were found in the UK, then I should have kept non-American on the table. Of course, West Virginia companies did export their marbles, so that's still possible, I suppose.

"transparent swirls" might be the best that can be done. If vintage, then odds are they were made in West Virginia.

Art, I was trying to think of how to describe the kind of swirl that one might see "encircling the marble" from the glass being twisted around in one direction during the handgathering process, compared to the more wadded up swirl from the machine-made process. I gave up on it, but I think you made a worthy effort!

MFC's are handgathered marbles. They were made by someone sticking a metal rod into a pot of molten glass, then pulling out a blob of glass, spinning the rod in one direction to get the blob into better shape I guess, and then cutting the marble off the end of the rod. Then the still-molten marble would go down rollers which would help it become more spherical before it cooled off too much. This process creates a recognizable pattern in the glass, typically with a cutline on one end and a "nine-and-tail" on the other end. Your green marbles are machine-made. The first does appear to have a swirl pattern as you mentioned in your original post. The second appears to have a seam, meaning it likely would have come from a company which made patches. That could help narrow down the maker. The maker won't be MFC though.

In the top photo it looked like two yellows next to each other on the top side and two oranges next to each other on the bottom side (with only the white having vanes on opposite sides).

Older Asian. I don't know if old enough to be considered "vintage" (which is pre-1970), but still oldish. I wanted to say Japanese, but I can't swear on that either. With the white vanes being on opposite sides of the marble that's called a "cross-through" cat's eye or "cross-thru" or "x-thru" ... you get the picture. Cross-through cat's eyes are among the more desirable ones. If you can get a non-white cross-through pair or if all three pairs cross through, that's even better. Robust solid color vanes are good for displayability. Translucent vanes could appeal for being less common.

Even with swirls and differences in shade, these are generally considered solid-colored marbles. If small they would be called "game marbles." At nearly an inch, you might have a better chance of nailing down a maker than in the small sizes. But in general, it's really hard to get an ID for a solid-colored marble.